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Media & Communication

Equipment & Inventory

Majors have immediate access, even as first years to up-to-date and top-of-the-line production equipment offering a wide variety of high-end production equipment including professional digital video cameras, digital audio recorders, a variety of directional and omnidirectional microphones, lighting kits and tripod systems, and various production accessories.

Walson Hall is home to the Department of Media and Communication and the Film Studies Program’s reservable store of media technology.

This material is free to reserve and use for instructors, staff, and students for majorial and intra- and extracurricular work within the MediaCom department, the Film Studies program, the Documentary Storymaking minor, and approved extracurricular activities and organizations.

The equipment reserve contains media production equipment of varying complexity and includes, but is not limited to, cameras, audio, lighting, and stabilization devices as well as their periphery.

Walson Hall is a media-rich teaching environment. Our purpose with this policy document is to ensure that we are effectively supporting student learning and creative activity.

This process is not intended to discourage students from exploring media-making. Rather, it is to ensure that all, in and out of the classroom, have a fair chance to explore.

This is a request-based system.

As such, all requests are treated as so and may be subject to change due to issues such as disrepair, loss, non-returns, and violation of these terms. The equipment managers and staff hold the right to make changes and offer alternatives to your request when necessary, but will never do so without appropriate notification.

Requests are limited to pre-approved uses and users.

Self-service, online requests and requests are limited to Muhlenberg MediaCom/Film Studies/Documentary Storymaking faculty or staff members, students in approved coursework, or advisors to or members of an approved extracurricular group or project.

Our standard set of approved extracurriculars includes but is not limited to:

Muhlenberg Broadcast Community

Muhlenberg Film Association

the Muhlenberg Weekly

WMUH Radio

Healthy Youth Peer Education (HYPE)

All equipment must also fall generally within pre-approved uses:

curricular and/or instructional needs, including assignments, tutorials, demonstrations, and development

extracurricular needs, including content development and creation

documentation, including events, happenings, “moments in time”

promotion of the department/program/minor/club as a whole, events, message, assets, and reach

professional development and practice of faculty and/or staff

We do not readily supply equipment for any coursework, projects or departments outside of MediaCom, Film Studies, Documentary Storymaking, and the approved list of extracurriculars.

Additional requests can be made to the department for any project outside of this scope by using our Special Request procedure and subject to departmental review and to the current needs of the curriculum.

This is a priority-based system. Curricular need comes first.

Due to the limitations of our resources, a priority scale will be put into effect during high-curricular-use periods, typically during the latter half of semesters. The scale runs on three points, highest need to most deferrable: curricular need, extracurricular need, special request.

There are limited resources.

We do not have a 1:1 ratio of equipment to students in need. There are no guarantees on the availability of the equipment at any given moment. Plan ahead as much as possible.

Excessive requests of equipment will be discussed.

Due to the limitations of our equipment, and the high-demands during peak times, any request deemed excessive by faculty and/or staff will be reviewed and discussed with the reserver. Excessive requests typically hold multiple of the same item, ie. four cameras.

Pre-approved usage requests

You are required to request your own equipment online. Equipment staff will not create any requests for you. A laptop has been staged at the departmental desk if you need to make your request on the spot.

While we no longer require notice in advance on requests, it is still a good idea to submit your request at least a day before you need the equipment to give our staff time to check and prepare the items.

Once your request has been submitted online, you’ll receive an email detailing the request.

Special Requests

Special Requests are a paper form available in the Departmental office in Walson Hall. These forms must be filled out in full including information about the project, the requested equipment, and the time frame of the request. A Muhlenberg College MediaCom, Film Studies or Documentary Storymaking faculty and staff member must then review and sign the form, approving your project.

Special Requests must be delivered to the Department equipment staff at least two days prior to the requested pick up time. This is to ensure that we have the means to fulfill your request, stage the equipment and notify you if there is an issue.

Special Requests are then placed into a queue. Due to the limitations of our resources, a priority scale will be put into effect during high-use periods, typically during the latter half of semesters. Unfortunately, special requests made during high-use periods are the most deferrable. Curricular need comes first. You will be notified if your Special Request has been deferred via email.

All Special Requests continue to follow our other policies, notably our Late Policy.

Limited Reserve

Due to the sometimes intricate, dangerous, expensive, and/or limited nature of a selection of our equipment, some of our items have been flagged as Limited Reserve.

These equipment items are treated differently than any other item in the closet and have special requirements and terms to reserve:

The Canon 5D Mark III requires advanced course permission - for example, Advanced Video Production; or a in-person demonstration of use and safety scheduled with the Digital Cultures Technologist before being cleared to reserve. Clearance will be recorded and is permanent.

The Ronin motorized gimbal requires advanced course permission - for example, Advanced Video Production; or a in-person demonstration of use and safety scheduled with the Digital Cultures Technologist before being cleared to reserve. Clearance will be recorded and is permanent.

Pick up your reservation at your self-scheduled date and time.

Reservations that are not picked up two hours past the scheduled issue time will be recorded as a no-show and deleted from the system to allow others to reserve these items.

If you know that you are going to be late, you have the option to go into R&R and under My Bookings, and click Modify to attempt to reschedule your pick-up time. The system will not let you modify your issue if another person’s booking, our hours of operation, and/or the limit on the length of your reservation are in conflict.

You may also contact equipmentbooking@muhlenberg.edu or call 484-664-3218 during normal hours, Monday through Friday, 10am to 3pm to potentially reschedule your pick up.

Equipment is issued to the person that made the reservation.

We will not give any equipment to anyone other than the person named in our system. Faculty may request reservations be delivered and locked in their office.

Do not pull items from the closet yourself.

The equipment closet is a tight space with lots of tripping hazards, staged equipment and it is managed very closely within the Department’s own internal equipment procedure. Do not go into the closet and pull any items without consulting staff first.

It is your right and responsibility to check the equipment in your reservation at the time of issue.

Make it a point to look through your reservation to make sure that it is complete and operational before you leave with the equipment.

Additional minor equipment may be requested at pickup.

If a student requires a small number of minor (non-camera) additional materials, they may be requested at pickup if available. Substantial numbers of additional materials may be subject to judgment.

You will be asked to sign off on the equipment issue.

For record keeping purposes, you will be asked to sign off on receiving your reservation at the time of pickup.

Any unsafe, irresponsible, and/or illegal use of equipment will result in a full inquiry.

If any egregiously unsafe, irresponsible and/or downright illegal use of the equipment is found, you will receive notice and be required to discuss the situation at a scheduled date and time with MediaCom faculty and/or staff. The severity of repercussions will be weighed against the severity of the infraction.

Equipment trading and lending external to our system and policy is not permitted.

Anyone found participating in this activity will cause all involved to have their equipment reservation privileges revoked.

All returns must be processed by equipment room staff.

Return all equipment to the equipment room during normal hours, Monday through Friday, 10am to 3pm. Faculty may make a request for staff to pick-up their returns from their locked office. Faculty can not return equipment for students.

Return the equipment at your self-scheduled date and time.

You will be reminded by our system via email about your self-prescribed return date and time.

If you know that you are going to be late, you have the option to go into R&R and under My Bookings, and click Modify to attempt to reschedule your return time. The system will not let you modify your return if another person’s booking, hours of operation, and/or the limit on the length of your reservation are in conflict.

You may also contact equipmentbooking@muhlenberg.edu or call 484-664-3218 during normal hours, Monday through Friday, 10am to 3pm to potentially reschedule your return.

Return the entirety of your reservation at the same time.

Returns will not be accepted into the system until all pieces are physically returned to the department. Individual items from your reservation that are not returned by your scheduled return date and time will cause the entire reservation to be marked late and subject to our late policy.

We will only accept returns from the requestor on record.

Any return attempted by a third party will not be accepted.

Make sure that you have removed any of your own belongings from the return.

Our late policy is simple: we give you an extra hour past your self-prescribed return date and time. After that, if you haven’t reached out to the staff or attempted to modify the return date/time on your own, you will be marked late.

If you know or feel like you may be delayed in returning the equipment, contact equipmentbooking@muhlenberg.edu or call 484-664-3218 during normal hours, Monday through Friday, 10am to 3pm to potentially reschedule your return.

Once you are marked late, your access to our reservation system will be revoked and you will be required to reach out to the staff to get reactivated.

Collection

In using our online and paper systems for reserving equipment, data is being collected about you. We collect your:

Name

Email

Signature (on paper only)

Reservation details

As our equipment management system is installed on a server in the complete control of Muhlenberg’s Office of Information Technology, this data is stored locally on campus.

Usage

Internally, your data is used only in the following ways:

management and scheduling of equipment

confirmation of receipt and return of equipment

reporting on use, including scale, frequency, and peak usage

research into broken and/or missing items

We will never sell any of this information to anyone. We will never give this data away to anyone outside of the college.

We will not publish or present this data to anyone outside of the department with identifying information.

We may present edited, anonymized data to administration when deemed necessary by the department as a whole, and only to promote/showcase departmental growth.

Retention

Your online data will be retained indefinitely in a passworded system to give us a historical record of reservation requests, or until a time in which we replace our current management system.

Any paper data with your signature may be archived by first, redacting any signatures, then by being scanned digitally and housed in protected, online storage.

Requests

At any time you may request a printed copy or complete removal of the data we’ve collected through our reservation procedure and/or system by written email request to anthonydalton@muhlenberg.edu.

Third-party links

Occasionally, we may include or offer third party services and links through our services. These third party sites have separate and independent privacy policies. We therefore have no responsibility or liability for the content and activities of these linked sites.

Nonetheless, we seek to protect the integrity of our services and welcome any feedback about these external services and pages.

The Department and Programs hold the right to change policy. We will never do so without attempting to include our community in the decision making, and never without informing all users before changes go into effect. All future policy updates will be pushed out to both our online and offline means of communicating.

Technical Assistance

Anthony Dalton is the Digital Cultures Technical Assistant and is available to provide technical assistance to students and faculty daily.adalton@muhlenberg.edu 484-664-3871